By Fire Well and Tree

 I am doing the "Fall Witchy Blogging Challenge" put up by friend Magpie over at  her blog, Parlor Games and Pentagrams .  I typically suck at these kinds of things, but I figured why the heck not? So hear I am, technically on Day 4 and just getting started, so I am going to be efficient and lump 1-4 together and really attempt to do better. No, seriously. Sep. 22 Fall Equinox how are you celebrating. Sep. 23 New Moon, embracing the coming dark half of the year. I am going to smoosh these together.   Normally I have multiple celebrations for all the high days.  My spouse and I usually lead the rite at the  shop .  In years past there is also the celebration with my  grove , and then I have my own home observation, which I have detailed here before. I know the Neopagan calendar calls it Mabon. This year people on the socials have been extra vocal about the name, which, if I were doing a reconstructed Welsh thing might matter to me. But I acknowledge my Neopaganism is just that

It is August here in Central Ohio, which means it is hot.  Many people are commenting on this, as if it had never happened before. Ironically it is COOLER than it was in June, which was definitely unusual, but become normal. If only we knew what was causing this?  The reason people are noticing and commenting is that they are in general out "in it."  Summer in Ohio brings a ton of weekend gatherings, fairs, and festivals, and they increase to critical mass in the late Summer/early Fall. I have spent nearly the entire summer (beginning Memorial Day weekend) bouncing between my house in suburbia, a tent in southeastern Ohio, or day-long weekend festivals at parks, or a small cabin in western NY.  The season will be over mid-October and I'll spend the rest of the year planning for 2025. I am not sure why I love these so much.  Although if I can ramble for a few lines, I am going to consider that it touches something deep within, forgotten by most, but as I am not the only on

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/books-in-black-wooden-book-shelf-159711/ I am not sure why I stopped posting... I think I was getting towards where I started the astrology/moon stuff, and thought "Why would I just keep posting the same thing over and over? People can use the labels to look for stuff in they want."  BUT... then I had no idea what I'd even talk about.   And I still don't really, but I am inspired today by a discussion I had this week.  We are starting "newby meetups" at  The Shop .  For some reason there's a huge gap of basic knowledge of Neopaganism.  Part of that, I think, is social media related.  But when I first became interested and then involved, the Internet was barely out of its Bitnet pre-cursor, and the World Wide Web hadn't even been invented. And while that seems like stone-age time technology-wise, it really was only 30 years ago.  So there were two ways to learn.  One, find someone who knew stuff, in perso

Photo by ZCH: https://www.pexels.com/photo/planet-mercury-in-full-shot-photography-12498795/ I know, people say that a lot...so... Okay firstly, retrograde is a real thing, astronomically.  You can find a more technical, but still accessible, explanation  here .  If you think about cars going around in several lanes of traffic, going the same speed and starting out parallel, eventually the the car in the shortest lane (usually the inside track) will get ahead of the car in the longer lane. It can  appear  then that as the first car passes the second, the second is actually going backwards.  If we think about planets in our solar system, they are all doing the same thing, and sometimes they pass each other. When Earth "passes" a planet during its orbit, that other planet is said to be retrograde.  Looking at them in the sky, the planet appears to move backward.    How often a planet becomes retrograde relative to Earth depends on not only its proximity to the Earth, but also

It's a DOOZY too. Starts off with a solar eclipse, and then full moon around Samhain. It's also our last "moonth" of the year, as if you're following the same version of the wheel of the year that I do, Samhain is the new year, so we'll start the cycle again. I may or may not keep up with the astrology stuff, I may change my tune and emphasize something else.  So as we start, The sun is in Libra, and so is the New Moon on Saturday, October 14. Libra is about partnerships and balance, and yes, justice, but maybe not with a capital J. We can spend a lot of time trying to make sure everyone is treating us JUST RIGHT, but remember as scales balance, they sort of wobble back and forth, one side lower and the other higher. The sun and moon, our outward and inner selves, these are things we often strive to keep in balance, sometimes giving too much, and other times pulling back too far, but always returning to that equilibrium. Whatever house this is in for you m

  Photo by Marta Nogueira "It's the most wonderful tiiime of the yeeeear" If I was better at such things, I'd do a whole re-write of that song.  Maybe I will work on it later. We are coming up to Samhain and while, yes, I do have the moon stuff to post, I wanted to take a step back to kind of review what the heck I'm doing this season!  If you're local to me, I would love to see you at the future events! First up was this past Saturday, when I was going to go to  Day of the Dead  put on every year by Latino Arts for Humanity at Greenlawn Cemetery in Columbus.   They have ofrendas , art, music, awesome food, and it's a lovely kick off.  Greenlawn is also where my grandparents are buried, so it gives me a chance to honor them, as I try to make a special effort to do so this time of year. If we have ourselves organized, my spouse and I take a day and travel to various cemeteries where our ancestors' graves are in Ohio.  It's a long day, going down to